German Mercenary Expatriates in the U. S. & Canada Following the American Revolution

It is commonly overlooked that the American Revolution witnessed one of the larger waves of German arrivals in the Americas up to that time. Unlike earlier streams of immigrants, the nearly 30,000 Germans who arrived at America’s shores between 1776 and 1783 were not farmers, craftsmen, or merchants; rather, they were mercenary soldiers dispatched to fight, for the most part, in support of George III’s goal of stemming the tide of the Revolution. (Civilian immigration to the Americas during this period ceased owing to British control of the high seas. ) Despite their service to the British Crown, many German mercenaries opted to seek their fortunes in the new U. S. Or Canada following American Independence. This phenomenon was of great interest to esteemed genealogist Clifford Neal Smith, who, during the 1970s and 1980s, researched the identities of 18th- and 19th-century German Americans whose whereabouts had been locked away in obscure German sources. This volume on German mercenaries combines three separate booklets in Clifford Neal Smith’s German-American Genealogical Research Monograph Series.

Title: German Mercenary Expatriates in the U. S. & Canada Following the American Revolution